================= HES POSTING ================= Some subscribers to this list may find the following paper abstract of "Methodology and the Birth of Modern Cosmological Inquiry" by Gale & Shanks of interest. The abstract was posted to the historical sciences list run by Bob O'Hara, and it deals with some of the issues recently discussed on HES. Greg Ransom ******************************************** Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 12:47:08 CST From: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Founder's Effect in Cosmology, ABS Abstract of METHODOLOGY AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN COSMOLOGICAL INQUIRY by George Gale University of Missouri-Kansas City Niall Shanks East Tennessee State University To appear: 1996: _Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Physics_ The central concern of this paper is with the ways in which issues, questions and debates in the domain of the philosophy of science can influence the birth, and subsequent development of a science. The case study to be discussed is that of modern cosmology. We will argue that the study of events in the early history of modern cosmology affords ample evidence of the many ways in which philosophy of science and science are inextricably intertwined. To the extent that we are able to make our case we will (a) provide evidence against the adequacy of rationalist reconstructions of the history of science that pretend that science develops in a philosophical vacuum, without regard to the conceptual and methodological debates that are standard fare among philosophers of science; and (b) provide evidence against the intellectual adequacy of (currently popular) social constructivist attempts to "sociologize" the analysis of events in the history of science in ways that downplay or eliminate the role of philosophy of science and its history as factors shaping the development of science. It turns out that the following two questions are central to understanding the nature of modern cosmology: [1] Why were events surrounding the birth of modern cosmology marked by vigorous indeed, sometimes downright raucous philosophical debates? [2] Why was the subsequent development of modern cosmology so long affected by the outcome of the debate? The discussion which follows attempts to answer these questions, in large part, by providing an historical narrative. Since many of the elements of the historical narrative are still not widely known, the narrative should be of some intrinsic interest, independently of its interest as part of the answer to the two questions. In our discussion of the second question, we will argue that there is an interesting explanatory analogy to be drawn between certain features of the initial community of cosmologists, and certain features of initial biological-species communities. Our proposed analogy trades upon principles developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, and called by him the "founder effect." We claim that events in the early history of cosmology manifest analogs of biological "founder effect" phenomena. We conclude by suggesting that the situation in modern cosmology's origin may be generalizable. If this is correct, then to the extent that modern cosmology manifests founder effect phenomena, so also will the many scientific communities which originate as it did, in initially small populations of investigator -- populations that need not reflect the conceptual and methodological diversity found in larger, more mature branches of science. In order to discuss the first of our two questions, we begin with a brief historical prologue. ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]